At Last, Our Policy in Israel/Palestine Is on the American Agenda

A number of friends passed on the article in yesterday’s Times where Joe Lieberman said that Ned Lamont was not committed to Israel, during a trip by the Senator to New York to raise money in Jewish circles. The challenger of course denied it.

This is good news: the issue is getting into the Times, and on front pages elsewhere.

The credit all goes to Walt and Mearsheimer. A few weeks back, the New Republic sniggered at the authors of the LRB paper on the Israel lobby, making it out to be a flash in the pan. Oh they got their little moment in the leftwing sun, how quickly they evaporated, was Marty Peretz’s tone. Well he’s wrong. This was a real bombshell that is reverberating. As I first reported last Sunday, and then as Gabriel Sanders reported in this week’s Forward, FSG has given the authors a book contract (at last); and meanwhile the front page of the influential New York Sun has run an attack on Tony Judt, who had lately argued on behalf of Walt and Mearsheimer’s views. These ideas are not going away.

I sense that we’re approaching a real political moment; and good for Lieberman for putting the issue on the agenda. Let’s have it out. Before long, who knows, maybe Chris Matthews will describe the settlements in the West Bank as what they are, religious apartheid, and Senator Hagel, or Senator Lamont, will ask, What effect these violations of the Geneva Conventions that we support are having on Arab hearts and minds… Am I dreamin’?